Coming in with the Golden Light

Posted on 6/28/2014 09:17:00 AM

I love these little Dreamtime strawflowers, not just because they remind me of that Kate Bush song and it's one of my all-time favorite albums, but also because they close up like little golfballs at night and then open in the day to this.  To touch it, it feels like straw, and you'd never know it was that pliable.  There's a metaphor in there somewhere, but I'm too overworked to find it.


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Things Like This Make Me Happy

Posted on 6/24/2014 11:51:00 AM In:


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Good Morning, Chrysler, How YOU Doin?

Posted on 6/21/2014 07:48:00 AM In:
I made a quick trip to Manhattan last weekend for a friend's baby shower and we stayed at a hotel just up the block from the Chrysler building.  I have an unnatural attraction to this building which I cannot appropriately explain. But still, it was comforting just to wake up in its shadow.




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You've Been Schooled

Posted on 6/20/2014 06:18:00 PM In:
Caterpillar: "Dad, what rhymes with apple?"

KoH: "Hmmm... maybe... Crap hole?"

Caterpillar: "I was thinking something appropriate."

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Black-Eyed Susan

Posted on 6/15/2014 09:00:00 AM

It's the Maryland state flower and yet for some reason, I have never been able to make them grow in my yard.  Perhaps buying them fully mature will help.  But just in case, I better take a picture now.

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Uses for an Old Basketball Hoop

Posted on 6/12/2014 08:57:00 AM

The KingofHearts made this when we decided to get rid of the basketball hoop that was in tatters but then got lazy and never went to the effort to remove the pole from the ground. He made the hooks on the forge (one of the forges) in the backyard and we bought some pots at Target, he cut holes in the bottom of them and slipped them down over the pole.  And all those little pots scattered around on the ground? Tiny currant tomato plants in them, which I have many plans for this summer.  I love it.  It almost doesn't look like an weird metal pole randomly stuck in the front yard, right?   Finally that forge habit is starting to benefit me, Me, ME.

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That's here. That's home. That's us.

Posted on 6/11/2014 06:50:00 PM
This little bit of prose, written by someone who has more facility with language that I will ever hope to obtain, has come to mean a great deal to me and I was reminded of it recently.  I thought I'd give you a break from my disjointed, brain dump style of writing and let you read some really important big ideas.  The impetus for this was the following photograph, taken by Voyager 1 just as it reached the edge of our solar system. Carl Sagan asked for this... and being Carl Sagan, I guess, he got what he wanted.  NASA complied.  Voyager 1 turned its camera around and took this picture of earth - the farthest picture ever taken of our planet.


Here's what Carl had to say, contemplating this picture:


From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.


- Carl Sagan, 1994

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Playing Favorites

Posted on 6/10/2014 06:34:00 PM In:
*The Caterpillar playing with my guitar* 

"This is my favorite string." 

*bong* 

"This is my second favorite string." 

*bing

KoH to me: "Well, at least we know she's yours."

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We got home from church today and The Shortlings wanted to do something together,  like... play a game...  maybe that one where you look for things in the pictures.  And since one of the comments in church today was, "a good thing to do, might be to actually spend some time with your children instead of just plopping down in front of the television and watching a movie," we decided to... you know... plop down in front of the television and watch a movie.  We're nothing if not contrary.

For some, unknown reason - probably that reason involves the $5 bin at some big box, low budget, department store - we own a copy of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.  So we pulled that one out and vegged out in front of the TV with the kids for a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon.

There is a minimum data set for cultural education in this house.  It involves Charlie Chaplin movies, modernist art, Humphrey Bogart, live symphonic orchestral concert attendance, music written by Stravinsky, works by Lewis Carroll, and 80s movies.

I told some friends we were doing this and immediately, the response was, "Awesome! How is it being received?"

You tell me.


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It's a Fair Cop

Posted on 6/07/2014 07:08:00 AM

Snapped with my phone through the windshield of the car while coming back from the Eastern shore last week.  If you had told me in my eighth grade photography class that I would one day be able to take a picture like this with a single piece of equipment that I carried around in my pocket, I might have actually tried to major in photography in college - a degree program I figured I could never in my wildest dreams afford to undertake.  Or maybe I would have accused you of sorcery and supported drowning you as a witch, I don't know. I'd have at least put the carrot on your nose.

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Looming

Posted on 6/02/2014 08:25:00 PM
Heading back home over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge makes me a little bit nostalgic.


I'm totally becoming a Marylander... as the can of Old Bay in my spice rack that I sprinkled on my potato salad last week will confirm.

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Bewildering Conversations, vol. xxxi

Posted on 6/01/2014 08:14:00 PM In:
"Dad, you remind me of a tool...."

*silence*

"...because you help me. And tools help people."

"Well, thank you.  My mind was totally going somewhere else, but that's nice too."

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Washington, D.C. Metro, United States
Married, 40ish mom of two (or three, or four, depending on how you keep score) who stepped through the lookinglass and now finds herself living in curiouser and curiouser lands of Marriage, Motherhood, and the Washington, D.C. Metro Area.

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